For a few years now there has been a tipping in the balance of how much single player games are relevant in modern day video games. Especially for a little over half year now with Electronic Arts’ input about single player games and having a dedicated live service system. Today, it is time to show that Activision is just as bad when it comes to this predicament. Recently they just shared more information and gameplay for Treyarch’s next installment in the "Call of Duty: Black Ops"series, "Black Ops 4". This next installment will have the standard multiplayer and zombies mode, but is the first to introduce their own battle royale mode for a "Call of Duty" game. What also makes it different to is the fact of how it doesn’t have a single player campaign. The responses from the community is definitely mixed about this choice. By the end of the day though everybody is right to their opinions of the game either having or not including a single player mode. What is wrong is Activision/Treyarch’s reasoning for not including it.

A little over a month ago Polygon informed the world that "Black Ops 4"indeed was not going to have a single player narrative. At least according to their sources. We know now that this is case, and the reasoning is because they ditched it earlier this year for the fact that they were not going to complete it on time. Eurogamer in the past weel hasn’t hesitated to get the answers of why. They interviewed Treyarch co-studio head Dan Bunting for answers. Bunting’s response to why they ditched the development on the single player campaign was this:

”Going back to the very beginning of Black Ops 4 development, we never had set out to make a traditional campaign. We always started from the place of, we're going to make something different with this game that was going to be inspired by how our community was interacting with Black Ops 3 and the games over the years.”

Then the interviewer wanted Bunting to clarify that there was never a campaign in development. The first thing Bunting said in his response was:

”There was never a traditional campaign.”

No matter what the studios’ choice was for their reasons to not have a single player campaign is fine. The issue here is how they are spinning around all of this. We know the true reasons why there is no single player because of how they were confirmed by many sources. Which is the fact they didn’t have time to finish it and put their eggs in the basket of what is popular, aka battle royale. What doesn’t make sense is the lie that Bunting has expressed as the reasonings. Treyarch is expressing how to tell narrative stories now is through games’ multiplayer functions. Trying to sell us on the idea that cutting features is transformative and times have changed. In reality though it is what it is. A cut feature. The understanding of why they won’t be honest about the true reasons of not having this feature is baffling.

If you’re thinking now that few people play "Call of Duty" for the campaign, and it isn’t a big deal of what is being said. Well of course there will be people who think that. Especially in a recent interview with Polygon about the same subject at hand with Dan Bunting saying:

“When I first started on multiplayer in the Call of Duty franchise, 10 percent of our population was playing competitive multiplayer,” he said. “Fast forward to 2015 or 2016, you’re looking at 90 percent of our players are playing multiplayer ... If you look at it through that lens, and trying to deliver more for your players and how you’re playing the game, it’s a pretty easy decision. I realize it’s also a challenging decision for other reasons. But we’ve never been ones to shy away from a challenge.”

This causes a permeating assumption that close to no one plays the campaign for "Call of Duty" anymore, or whoever does has significantly declined over the timespan Bunting states. YouTuber YongYea has soft numbers that provides to the subject at hand of being incorrect. YongYea confidently expresses the fact that the recent "Call of Duty" title "WWII" can prove Bunting’s allegations wrong. The game has reached about 20.7 million people over all platforms like PS4, Xbox One, and PC. With Playstation 4 having a whopping number of about 12.1 players of that 20 million. For this case, YongYea uses the percentages of Playstation Trophies and Steam’s Global Achievements to show the numbers.

On Playstation 4, people who played the first campaign mission on "WWII" was about 51 percent, and the percentage of people who completed the campaign was at about 25 percent. By that case alone proves Bunting’s numbers wrong. For the case of multiplayer, there are two achievements where you get ten kills while playing online, and entering Prestige 1 in multiplayer. About 65 percent got the achievement of getting ten kills, and 21 percent for entering the first prestige in multiplayer. Those numbers are certainly not bad for single player and multiplayer, but is significantly different to what Bunting was claiming. The numbers are vastly different on Steam as well.

The point is that single player campaigns for "Call of Duty",or any game for that matter, is not as dead as companies like EA and Activision make it seem. There are people who peter out of a game for either single player or multiplayer. Not just single player. No matter what choice a company has for making a decision like this is okay. What is not okay is a company who is downplaying a certain group of people in their community, and masquerades the idea of getting rid of a single player feature is transformative and bold innovation. "Black Ops 4"is proving to be cheaper to develop and more monetizable. Which is fine, but not under these circumstances.